New to the Stoics
You do not need any preparation to read these books. The Stoics wrote for people in the middle of ordinary life, and their counsel was meant to be used, not studied. Begin with a single passage and let the rest follow.
What Stoicism is, briefly
Stoicism was a school of philosophy founded in Athens around 300 BC and carried on for centuries in the Roman world. Its concern was practical: how to live well, keep a clear head, and meet fortune, loss, and other people with steadiness. The Stoics held that we are troubled less by events themselves than by our opinions about them, and that a good life is built from the things genuinely within our control, chiefly our own judgments and choices.
The two works here
This library holds two of the school’s most enduring texts. The Enchiridion, or Handbook, of Epictetus is a short manual of Stoic practice, set down by a student from his teacher’s lectures. It is direct, concrete, and easy to carry in the mind. The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius is the private notebook of a Roman emperor, written to himself and never meant for others to read. It has the feeling of a man reminding himself, over and over, how he means to live.
Where to begin
For the shortest complete path, start with the Enchiridion and read it in order; it is brief, and each chapter stands on its own. If you would rather hear Marcus in his own voice, open the Meditations anywhere. A natural first passage is Book II, chapter 1, where he steadies himself for the day ahead.
How to read here
Read one passage at a time. Use the left and right arrow keys, or the controls at the top of the reader, to move between passages; they carry on across book boundaries. Every passage has a permanent link you can copy and return to. The library remembers where you left off, and you can set the type size and line spacing to your comfort, and read in a light or dark view. Press the question mark key to see the full list of keyboard shortcuts.
A note on the translations
The translations here are complete and in the public domain, which means they are older: George Long rendered the Meditations in 1862, and Elizabeth Carter the Enchiridion in 1758. Their English is formal and at times archaic, but faithful and often beautiful. If a line feels dense, read it slowly; the difficulty usually belongs to the thought, not the words. More translations and more works will be added over time, and where more than one edition exists you will be able to switch between them and read them side by side.